


swift like blades (of grass seed come to flower)

by blackkat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Fairy Tale Elements, Families of Choice, Fractured Fairy Tale, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: The man reached out, touched the fall of Orochimaru’s too-black hair. “Aren’t you scared, to be so deep in the wood?”“Fear is for those with something to lose,” Orochimaru retorted, and tipped his hand, spilling knotted grass across the tree roots.The man’s blue eyes lingered on them for a long moment, then lifted. “Those would have flowered,” he said, but not a condemnation. Just interest, touched with amusement.“I kill things,” Orochimaru said blandly, and brushed his fingers off on his robes. The green stains lingered, too deep in his skin to be rid of so easily. “I’m very good at it.”The man grinned, and there was indeed a monster in his eyes, no lesser for its loveliness. Greater, maybe, because the man looked welcoming and kind; no one would suspect that teeth were about to rip out their throat.“I’d be willing to bet I'm better,” he said.
Relationships: Gaara & Uzumaki Naruto, Gaara & Uzumaki Naruto & Orochimaru, Namikaze Minato/Orochimaru
Comments: 58
Kudos: 1645
Collections: Precious Rare and Unique





	swift like blades (of grass seed come to flower)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yoshishisha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoshishisha/gifts).



> A gift-fic for yoshi, for the Secret Santa exchange on my discord! Happy holidays, yoshi, and I hope this is what you wanted!

Orochimaru finds them in the square one cold December morning, huddled at the foot of the frozen fountain. No one has stopped to offer help; the good people of the town hurry past, averting their eyes from children in rags.

Only Orochimaru bothers to look, distant and cold and separate as he is. Looks out of spite, looks out of stubborn obstinance, looks out of a refusal to be anything but what they say he is, the strange, discomforting creature in their midst. It’s a cold day, thick with snow to the point Orochimaru can hardly see, but he comes to a stop before the two little boys crouched on the ground and says, “You look cold.”

The redhead glares, dark and angry and suspicious, lips blue. His friend looks marginally warmer, clutching the redhead close, but he’s all bluster when he puffs up and gives Orochimaru a defiant look.

“That’s because it _is_ cold, bastard!” the blond yells, and Orochimaru raises a brow, amused despite himself. Not simpering, that reaction. He appreciates that.

“Don’t you like the snow?” he asks, cruel amusement flickering to life. He cocks his head, long hair slithering over his shoulder, already almost white with snow. If the boys spend much longer out here, they’ll be buried in an hour.

“No,” the redhead says, almost fervent, and Orochimaru raises a brow, surprised by the bloody-edged vehemence of that response.

“From warmer climes, are you?” he asks, amused, and rises to his feet.

“Wait!” the blond boy cries, and lunges to grab the edge of Orochimaru’s heavy winter robes, though he doesn’t let go of his friend. “You're just gonna _leave_?”

Orochimaru laughs, low and enough to make anyone else in the town recoil. It’s _interesting_ , isn't it, that the boy doesn’t even flinch. “My child, if I did anything to help you, it’s more likely you’d be run out of town than even vaguely tolerated, the way you are now. You don’t want my help.”

The boy’s mouth takes on a mulish slant. “No one _else_ is even looking at us,” he tells Orochimaru, and holds his eyes.

How fascinating, Orochimaru thinks, watching something dark and _furious_ stir in blue depths. Not a gentle child. Not a tame one, either.

Both of these boys have monsters in their eyes.

Above all else, Orochimaru is a greedy, craven creature. The people in the town look at him and see a beast, and Orochimaru has never not proved them right. But—things have been lost in doing so. Things like touch, and regard that is not hostile, and whispers that are not cruel.

The same people have judged these boys as dangerous, worthy of disregard. How can Orochimaru not prove it by taking them for himself?

“Oh, very well,” he says, and holds out his pale, cold hands, one for each child. “Come along, then, it’s hardly growing warmer and I want to be out of the cold.”

Blue eyes widen, and immediately the blond boy reaches for him, curls both hands around one of Orochimaru’s. “We can go with you?” he asks excitedly.

But Orochimaru’s eyes are on the redhead, on the wary, suspicious way he looks from his friend to Orochimaru. When a pale gaze settles on his face, Orochimaru smiles, thin, a dare.

“Really,” he says softly. “Do you have anything to lose?”

“Yes,” the boy retorts. “Too much.”

“Gaara,” the blond boy whispers, loud enough that Orochimaru can easily hear it. “You're _cold_. Let’s go!”

Gaara hesitates, wavers. “You have a snake tattoo,” he finally says, accusing.

“And you have sharp eyes.” Orochimaru tugs one sleeve back, showing him the mark. The beast-mark, only give to those who are too valuable to kill but likely should be done away with anyway. Orochimaru was a soldier once. He followed orders.

It’s very likely that he followed orders too well, given where he’s ended up.

Gaara stares at the mark for a long, long moment, then raises his gaze. “All right,” he says finally, rises, stiff and awkward from the cold. His friend scrambles up with him, but Orochimaru is still stuck on the agreement. Frowning, he looks from one child to the other, then tilts his head.

“Now you agree?” he asks bemused. “After you see my mark, but not before?”

Gaara looks at his friend, who looks back. “My father calls those spirit markers,” he says, and something slides down Orochimaru’s spine, cold and prickling in a way that has nothing to do with the cold. “He said that they put them on people they wanted the spirits to take away.”

Orochimaru has heard the same thing, but it’s an old, old tale. His mother knew it, but then, his mother had more reason than most, given the stories of her grandmother. To hear it from a child’s lips is…startling.

“Yes,” Orochimaru says at last. “That’s another name for it, I suppose.”

Gaara nods, like they’ve come to an agreement, and reaches out. He takes Orochimaru’s free hand in his own chilled ones, and says, “Maybe when they come to take you, the spirits will take us, too.”

(Once, a very long time ago, Orochimaru asked his mother why their family tree only had branches in one direction, and she’d laughed.

“Your great-grandmother was a soldier,” she said. “And a wanderer. After the war she left her army and wandered away, and years later she came back with a child. She always said the father was a spirit, and there’s no way to track a spirit’s lineage, is there, my sweet?”

It’s a pretty tale, Orochimaru has always thought. A sweet excuse for why their family has always tended toward the eerie and the odd. His mother was a poisoner, and his grandmother the old king’s assassin. Orochimaru himself was a general, right up until the king was overthrown. Right up until people learned that their old king was neither kind nor wise, but blind and foolish and easily led.

Orochimaru had done whatever was ordered of him, _gleefully_.

Small wonder he was marked, in the face of that, but—

If the spirits are meant to claim him, it’s well past time for them to do so.)

With the spring comes a thawing.

There are voices, now, in Orochimaru’s lonely old house. There are footsteps at all hours, fingerprints on the windowpanes, two more sets of shoes beside the door. Orochimaru offers a greeting when he steps in and immediately has it returned. Things have been broken, mended crooked, put back where they were, but—

It’s hard to mind, Orochimaru thinks, and is startled by it.

Naruto and Gaara take his house for their own. They are bright boys, and destructive, and Naruto at least is very loud. They are friends but they yell at each other, cry, mend fences, fight again. Between the two there are enough emotions to be exhausting, and Orochimaru loathes all displays of emotion in general but now has been chosen as mediator. He never has a moment’s peace, thinks more than once that he should simply toss them both back out into the snow.

By that time, though, there is little snow left, and certainly not enough to be suitably dramatic. Orochimaru resigns himself to waiting another year to eject them back out into misery, and tolerates the mess of humanity making itself at home in his house in the meantime.

It is not a fix for anything except an empty space that’s dwelt in Orochimaru’s spare bedroom since he and Tsunade and Jiraiya left to enlist. It is not a _boon_ , not when Orochimaru’s study is constantly interrupted. There is no decrease in the cold looks, no drop in the whispers when Orochimaru walks out in public. But—

Three steps into the spring market, snow melted into puddles that feed the new grass, someone whispers _monster_.

(There is no earthly reason it should feel better, that Orochimaru doesn’t know which of them it was directed at.)

Naruto huffs, and Gaara scoffs. Orochimaru rolls his own eyes in commiseration, smirking, and—

Small hands take his, one on the left and one on the right, and somehow, the springtime warmth makes everything easier to bear.

“No one else goes into the wood,” Naruto says, in the tone that means he thinks everyone else is stupid and can't understand their reasons. When Orochimaru glances over, his face is screwed up and confused. “Why not?”

Orochimaru hums, twisting white thread around the base of a bundle of mallow. There are more herbs scattered across the kitchen table, and Gaara is concentrating on picking the berries from a branch of juniper, frowning down at the prickly needles.

“Because they are fools who can't be bothered to learn their tales,” Orochimaru says. “Old things live in the woods, and people fear old things.”

“Like you?” Naruto asks, eager to agree, and Orochimaru closes his eyes, willing patience forward.

“Like spirits,” Gaara says without looking up. “Things in the forest eat people who wander too far in.”

“A lucky thing,” Orochimaru says, dismissive, and sets the bundle aside to be hung from the rafters with the rest. Immediately, Naruto snatches it up and scales the rough river-rock of the chimney, hauling himself into the beams. If he’s ever felt a fear of heights, Orochimaru has never seen it.

“After all,” Orochimaru murmurs, tilting his head to look up at the drying herbs, and smiles as Naruto ties the string off and then collapses on the beam, legs dangling. He was able to find far more herbs this time than he ever did alone, and it should be more than enough to pay for food through the winter. No one likes him, but as he’s the only one willing to brave the forest, the doctors and medicine-makers at least find him valuable. “No one else even bothers to try and find our herbs among the trees.”

“Do you ever go deeper into the woods?” Naruto wants to know. As soon as the words leave his mouth, Gaara freezes, and Orochimaru gives him a curious, narrow look.

“No,” he says. “Only once before, and I was young and foolish.”

He had companions then, too. Long ago, before Tsunade was queen and Jiraiya was her right hand, before Orochimaru had fallen into disgrace because he was to cruel to be theirs any longer, he and Jiraiya and Tsunade walked the deep trees, seeking something none of them had been bale to put into name. Purpose, perhaps, Orochimaru thinks now, but back then it was just restlessness. Just youth, with no idea of what the future held.

“What was it like?” Gaara asks quietly, watching him like the answer means everything.

Orochimaru pauses, considering. “It was a long journey,” he says finally, slowly. The feeling of eyes on them had never really gone away, and they’d slept in shifts, two always awake just in case. “But…there was a castle in the trees that we never reached, no matter how far we walked. And when night fell, the sky glowed a thousand colors. An aurora, though we should have been too far south to see such things.”

“It sounds pretty,” Naruto says, and he’s never one for sorrow, or wistfulness, but this is nearly both.

“I suppose it was,” Orochimaru allows, and turns his attention to the lovage piled beside him. “I hate to think what we disturbed, but—it was a beautiful journey.”

He refuses to feel nostalgic for those days, with Tsunade on his right and Jiraiya on his left, steady and solid. But they had left him, parted ways once the army had its claws in them, and now the distance is too great. The threads that bound them have frayed away to nothing. Orochimaru would not risk another trip deep into the forest now, even if they were with him.

Besides, Orochimaru has too many things to do to trek deep into the forest just to sightsee. There's a garden to plant and a root cellar to clean and new clothes to sew, because Naruto and Gaara are both outgrowing theirs. Orochimaru can't be bothered to take a trip like that, even if he did have someone to watch his back.

His fingers pause on the white thread between his hands, remembering the glimpse of the castle they saw through the trees so long ago. Dark pines, paler oaks, verdant maples, and above them all rose spires of white stone, pinpoints of light that glowed in the darkness like stars when night fell. It had drawn him like a beacon, like a secret, and his feet had ached with the urge to turn in that direction and run.

He wonders, sometimes, what would have happened if he had. Once, he’d known he shouldn’t, because that would mean leaving Jiraiya and Tsunade on their own in a hostile world, but—

They turned and left him a few short years later, so what difference would it have made, in the end?

It’s not quite a lie, when he says no one else goes into the woods, but—

Perhaps it’s not quite the truth in full, either.

(There was a man, once. Orochimaru walked too far, looking for herbs, or maybe he was hoping that his mother’s stories of spirits taking the beast-marked were true. In the wake of Tsunade's ascension, in the wake of his banishment, he was angry and reckless and pushed too far, looking for that castle with its shining white spires.

Night caught him on the banks of a stream, with no one to watch his sleep, and he’d sat against a tree, tearing steps of grass into strips and twisting them into complex knots just to keep himself awake. He’d been wallowing, caught up in misery, and foolish. Such a fool, and—

“Careful,” a voice said, warm against the cool of autumn creeping up. “There are monsters in the trees.”

Orochimaru didn’t look up, didn’t look away from his hands. His mouth still tasted of poison and his fingers dripped blood from clawing at the snake tattoo, and anger was like light, like flame, ready to devour everything.

“There is a monster here, too,” he bit out, and heard the breath, the surprised inhale, and then—

Laughter, soft and sweet, and a man hand folded down to his knees in front of Orochimaru, blue eyes and golden hair falling around his face.

“Most people get to know me before calling me a monster,” he said, but not as if he minded.

Orochimaru paused, as pale as a dead thing, as cold as a snake, eerie and unsettling even to those who knew him. Paused, and looked at the man, so pretty and bright.

“I think,” he said, “that you are a lovely monster.”

“That was going to be my line.” The man reached out, touched the fall of Orochimaru’s too-black hair. “Aren’t you scared, to be so deep in the wood?”

“Fear is for those with something to lose,” Orochimaru retorted, and tipped his hand, spilling knotted grass across the tree roots.

The man’s blue eyes lingered on them for a long moment, then lifted. “Those would have flowered,” he said, but not a condemnation. Just interest, touched with amusement.

“I kill things,” Orochimaru said blandly, and brushed his fingers off on his robes. The green stains lingered, too deep in his skin to be rid of so easily. “I’m very good at it.”

The man grinned, and there was indeed a monster in his eyes, no lesser for its loveliness. Greater, maybe, because the man looked welcoming and kind; no one would suspect that teeth were about to rip out their throat.

“I’d be willing to bet I'm better,” he said.

“Are you?” Orochimaru drawled, and leaned in. let the man smell the poison on his breath, see the blush of it on his lips.

The man kissed him anyway, deep and hard. Pushed Orochimaru back against the tree, firm hands and the smell of old blood and storm-winds, calluses on his fingers from a blade. Orochimaru kissed back just as hard, biting, wanting blood, and—

He woke to knotted strands of grass blooming in his lap, lips tingling, breath rough, with an ache in his soul that a fading glimpse of that white castle couldn’t even begin to soothe.

(They go off to war because they're young and full of dreams, with legacies that pull like gravity and futures so bright they're blinding. The son and daughter of generals, the student of another general, and there should be nothing but light upon their paths.

But war has no light to it, and the darkness eats everything.

Dan falls, dies beneath an enemy sword, and Tsunade breaks. Maybe Jiraiya breaks with her, or maybe he was quietly breaking from the start, because he stays in enemy lands to atone for sins he pretends not to care about. And Orochimaru, Orochimaru was always broken—he stays in the capital right up until Tsunade returns, a conqueror to overthrow the king, with her old friends as collateral.

_No more_ , she tells Orochimaru when he’s dragged before, Jiraiya holding him on his knees. _No more death, Orochimaru_.

But all Orochimaru ever knew was death, right from the very first, and he laughs in her face.

Tsunade is merciful, so she leaves him alive.

Tsunade is cruel, so she doesn’t have him executed.

Tsunade is his friend and an enemy and a little girl with shattered dreams that forged her broken edges into steel, so she sets him loose upon the world, a branded thing, and tells him that she’s _sorry_.)

He never asks where the boys came from. Never asks about families or pasts or futures. There are few enough of those unbroken, and it’s none of his business besides. If Gaara and Naruto walk out the door one day, it’s their right, their choice. Orochimaru is neither parent nor keeper, and even if their touch sends curls of warmth into a heart he’d once thought frozen and impossible to thaw, they are not _his_. Not truly.

Orochimaru knows better than most that wild things can't be tamed, and knowing them too fully breaks their wildness. Like the castle in the distance that never moved but was always just beyond his reach, he keeps his distance, but—

There is a sense, sometimes, of what he isn't asking. A thread of suspicion that comes whenever Naruto's temper raises windstorms, and Gaara's rages shake the earth. Not often, not every time, but _enough_.

Orochimaru himself is a thing of poisons and possessions, can swallow nightshade berries and drink hellebore tea and smear his lips with oleander sap to kill with a kiss, twist a mind to his whims with a few sly words. His mother was a poisoner, his grandmother an assassin, and snakes curl around his feet in the sunshine as if they’ve found one of their own kind.

He looks, and considers, but he never quite asks.

(Sometimes, on long nights that slowly grow shorter, he thinks of a kiss in the forest that numbed his lips, of a monster with the prettiest smile he’s ever seen. Thinks of a body that pressed up against his, tangible weight and hoarded memory and something that was just shy of a promise. Wild things can't be tamed, he tells himself, and keeps well away from the forest in the aftermath of those dreams.)

The summer rains bring floods, and the floods sweep an invasion before them from he east.

Orochimaru hears the news, carried through by a herald in the queen’s colors. She comes seeking soldiers, but Orochimaru wears a beast-mark like a snake curled around his wrist, carries the memory of Tsunade's face in his mind. He turns away when she calls for volunteers, but that doesn’t mean he ignores the dangers. Their little town is near the border, a river away from where the enemy will march, and he trusts the kindness of an enemy army even less than he does the kindness of their own.

And then, like an omen, Naruto falls ill one night.

Gaara sits with him when he fails to wake the next morning, refuses to move even though Orochimaru can see him growing paler by the hour. His skin is too hot, but he shivers, and Naruto sleeps in the bed like he’s died but his body simply hasn’t realized it yet. Orochimaru tries every remedy he knows, brewed with even more care than the poisons he once traded in, but there’s no change.

Naruto sleeps, and sleeps, and doesn’t wake.

The town across the river burns, and Gaara wraps himself in all the blankets Orochimaru owns but still can't seem to warm himself.

It’s entirely self-serving, that Orochimaru walks the banks of the river in his spare moments, watching for the invaders. The water is rising to cover the road, but he knows better than to think that will halt the advance. The rains are unnatural, too fierce, and if there are spirits left to guard the river he thinks they must be asleep, caught in some forced unconsciousness that comes like sickness.

(Naruto once made a storm pass, just with his fear of the thunder. A wind came up and blew the clouds away, and then the sky was calm again.)

The Naka River is the last great barrier between the border and the road to the capital, and Orochimaru knows with the certainty of experience that the enemy will march this way. There are no other fords, even with the river in flood; gorges start to the east, sheer and impossible to scale, and the forest lies to the west, even more impassable. The trees that march away from the bank rise higher and higher the deeper into the forest they go, and within half a mile there's nothing but shadow and green. No army can pass there.

The enemy will march this way, and Orochimaru has no loyalty to the crown. He won't fight them when they do, but—

But he has some loyalty left in his cracked old soul, and he won't stay, either.

When signal fires start to burn in the distance, torches indicating a path for a marching army, Orochimaru leaves the river. He hurries back through the pounding rain, the shuttered town. A watchman has seen the same; the alarm bell is tolling, but the village is quiet in the stormy twilight. No one stirs, and no one flees, and Orochimaru strides through streams of water that are already ankle-deep in the streets until he reaches his house on the outskirts.

“We’re leaving,” he tells Gaara, shivering and pale on the bed. “Get up.”

“We’re not,” Gaara tells him, flat, and curls his weak fingers around Naruto's hand. “We _can't_.”

“If we stay, we find out how far the enemy will go to burn a town that’s already drowning,” Orochimaru counters, and wraps Naruto in the thickest two blankets. “Dress, and take an extra cloak.”

Gaara is fever-pale, with red spots burning on his cheeks as the heat eats him from the inside, but he stares at Orochimaru with eyes that see too much. Orochimaru looks back, not bothering to hide.

It’s still six months until the snows, and he won't get rid of the children until _he_ chooses. An approaching army certainly can't force his hand.

“Where are we going?” Gaara asks, instead of agreeing, but he slides off the bed and stumbles. Staggers, catches himself, and grimly, determinedly crosses the room to put his shoes on.

“The forest,” Orochimaru says, because the only other option is fleeing southward to the capital, and the capital is where Tsunade and Jiraiya are. Orochimaru refuses to set foot there.

Gaara's eyes widen, just for a moment, and suddenly he’s much quicker putting Orochimaru’s spare cloak on. When he draws the hood up, it almost swallows him, but it’s warmer than his threadbare one, even if it’s too large. Orochimaru drapes oilcloth over his head, then tosses another over Naruto before he hoists the unconscious boy onto his shoulder, and says, “Quickly now.”

“Is the bell ringing?” Gaara asks, opening the door. Orochimaru follows him out into the storm, wishing he had a horse, or even an oxcart, but he travels too little to need one, and he’s never had the money regardless. Not since he left the army.

“For all the good it will do,” Orochimaru says, and doesn’t look back as he picks up a swift pace. Naruto is heavy against his shoulder, but haste is more important than comfort, and Orochimaru ignores the ache in his arms that grows as they pass the fork in the road that leads to the capital. The other road turns west, and vanishes at the first line of trees, so sharply that it might as well have been cut by a knife.

Something kindles in Orochimaru’s chest, bright and white and searing. He breathes, breathes like he’s exhaling smoke from his lungs, and can't tell if it’s fear or fervor.

He pulls Gaara past the edge of the forest and vanishes into the green dark, leaving the tolling bell behind them.

They rest beneath an oak overgrown with wisteria, until little of the tree itself remains. The wisteria spreads out, long vines as thick around as a man’s leg, and the leaves and flowers are thick enough to turn the rain into nothing but cold drips. Orochimaru finds the driest spot beneath the overhang, and though some part of his is wary about allowing Gaara to sleep, for fear that he won't wake, he also knows the boy needs rest. Gaara, for his part, huddles under Naruto's blankets, the oilcloth covering them, and doesn’t sleep for long hours. Instead, he watches Naruto's face like he’s waiting for a sign of wakefulness.

Orochimaru wants to dissuade him, tell him it’s hopeless, but the words stick in his throat. Instead, he covers Gaara securely once the boy drops into sleep and steps away, moving to the edge of the fall of blooms. He hasn’t seen so much as an animal move since they passed the border, and the unnatural stillness curls like claws down his spine.

Naruto's breathing comes easier here, though. Orochimaru noticed a mile into the forest, and it loosens the knot tied in his chest in a way he didn’t expect.

Brushing a hand across the jade leaves, Orochimaru breathes out, tips his head back. his hair is soaked, a heavy weight down his back, and he’s unpleasantly cold, even if the night is warm. Snakes like sun, and Orochimaru has never been anything but a snake in his soul. He wonders, faintly, where he can go from here, how he can manage to traverse the whole of an enchanted wood and emerge in one piece, but—there’s no choice, is there? With an army at their backs, and no hope of shelter in the capital, Orochimaru’s only course of action is to run as far and as fast as he can and find somewhere to rebuild.

With a breath that’s almost a sigh, he casts one more glance at Naruto and Gaara, then steps out into the rain. There's enough of a gap in the trees around the wisteria’s sprawl that he can see the horizon, and he studies it closely, trying to make out any points of light like stars against the dark sky.

“Looking for something?” someone asks from just behind him.

Orochimaru’s breath catches, and he turns.

The golden-haired man smiles, still bright, still just hiding the beast beneath. He hasn’t changed in all the years since Orochimaru has seen him, and when his hand slips across Orochimaru’s skin, curves around Orochimaru’s wrist, it’s _warm_. Orochimaru closes his eyes, not sure how to bear it, and the man makes a sound of amusement, pulls him in.

“You came back,” he says, and callused fingers brush Orochimaru’s hair back behind one ear.

“If you wanted me to return sooner, you could have sent a card,” Orochimaru says, sharp, though he hardly means the venom. Lips brush his cheek, that same tingling heat as last time, and he can't help the sound that’s pulled from him at the rush of heat that curls through his stomach. Reaching up, he fists a hand in dry golden hair, tugs, and the man laughs against his throat.

“I would have,” he says, soft. “But—I lost something precious, and I’ve been looking for it since. The world beyond the forest is wide.”

“You might want to hurry, if what you lost is in Fire Country,” Orochimaru says, and opens his eyes. Leans into the arms that slide around him, and he’s never wanted closeness before, but—those drugging kisses are too much to resist. “There’s an army approaching, and the world is drowning.”

“Not this world,” the man says, and pulls Orochimaru down into another kiss, slow and intent. He tightens his hold, deepens the kiss, and Orochimaru sighs into it, tips his head to meet him with teeth and tongue, and feels an ache of old loneliness melting out of his spine. Naruto and Gaara care, but they’re children. No one has ever _wanted_ Orochimaru like this, and it’s a salve to sore pride and a thread of warmth drawn up from the depths of his heart in equal measure.

“No,” Orochimaru says, amused. “I suppose not.” He pauses, considering, and asks, “What would I have to pay to make a home here?”

The man pulls back, just a little, and Orochimaru opens his eyes. He’s watching Orochimaru, considering, careful, and when Orochimaru arches a brow at him, he grins, bright and sweet.

“A name,” he says. “Give me your name and you’ll have a place here forever.”

Orochimaru isn't a fool. Not entirely. He knows the weight of a name given away, knows the weight of how they met before, halfway to a dream. But—

“If you own my name, you own everything associated with it,” he says, and part of his thoughts are on Naruto and Gaara, asleep beneath the lavender blooms. Another part is on the mark around his wrist, a stain set into his soul.

The man just smiles, though, cups Orochimaru’s cheek in one sword-rough hand. “I know,” he says, and his eyes are so blue it almost aches. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

It feels like a weight lifted, or maybe a weight removed. “All right,” Orochimaru says, and he’s never given in easily, but—this surrender is more peaceable than any that have come before. He’s been dreaming of this man for so long, after all. “My name is Orochimaru, and it is yours to keep.”

Gentle, careful, the man kisses him, seals the bargain with a press of lips and the warmth of his breath tangled with Orochimaru’s. “I'm Minato,” he says, and draws Orochimaru down to the wet earth, to their knees as he kisses him again. Pulls him in, right up against him, and that smile is wicked and wild and full of want. “What are you looking for in the forest, Orochimaru? Is it the same thing as last time?”

The first time was purpose. The second time was oblivion. Now Orochimaru draws a breath, raises his head to meet Minato's eyes.

“No,” he says. “I was looking for a home.”

Minato's smile is as brilliant as the sun. “And now you’ll have one,” he says, leaning up to press his lips to Orochimaru’s forehead. “Two monsters, and a whole forest to call their own.”

Orochimaru can't help but smile, just a little, and he kisses Minato like he’ll never have to stop. “A deal,” he says, and—

A cry, sharp and relieved and _bright_ , carrying from within the wisteria, and Orochimaru is on his feet in an instant, pushing back into the shelter. Gaara is sitting up, blankets pooled around his waist, and it looks like his fever has broken, the color coming back to his face. On the ground, still sprawled out, Naruto has his eyes open, and he’s blinking up at the dripping ceiling of branches like he can't understand how it got there.

“Naruto,” Orochimaru says, and blue eyes flicker over to him, widen with relief.

“Orochimaru!” he says, and reaches out, and Orochimaru drops to his knees, brushing his hair back. When Naruto all but slithers into his lap, he just snorts and doesn’t protest as he normally would, just loops an arm around him to hold him close.

“How are you?” he asks, checking Naruto's forehead. His skin is cool, and his eyes are fully aware, but the former deathly stillness is hard to forget.

“I’m okay!” Naruto says brightly. “The spell broke! We’re both okay now!”

Distance, maybe, if they came far enough and the army passed. Orochimaru breathes out, curls his hand around the back of Naruto's head—

“Naruto?” Minato says, ragged, and Naruto's eyes go wide. Instantly, he’s wriggling out of Orochimaru’s grasp, staggering, and he throws himself at Minato without pause.

“Dad!” he shouts, and Minato grabs him, laughing with sheer relief. Spins him around and hugs him, kisses his cheek, and if he was bright before it’s nothing compared to now. He’s laughing, beaming, and Orochimaru’s breath tangles in his throat and won't come out.

“Oh,” Gaara says, quiet, and looks down at his hands. “It did break.”

Suspicion flickers, and Orochimaru looks from Naruto and Minato with their heads bent together to Gaara, and cocks his head. “The army’s spell?” he asks.

“That too,” Gaara says, rather disdainfully.

“Madara's spell,” Minato says, and a moment later his hand settles on Orochimaru’s shoulder, curls, and he slides down to his knees beside him. There’s nothing but gratitude in his eyes. “He cursed me for interfering with his plans. I would lose Naruto, and I wouldn’t get him back until I physically brought him home.”

“A contradiction spell,” Orochimaru murmurs, and he knows such things are never meant to be broken. “But I gave you my name, so I became part of you.”

“And you brought them home,” Minato agrees, fierce, _hot_ , and his hands find Orochimaru’s face. “You broke our spell.”

Orochimaru was running. Running to keep the first good thing to find him in years alive. And somehow, in the process, he found where he was going without ever knowing the destination. His own contradiction spell, he thinks, and closes his eyes, leaning into Minato's touch.

“I had to earn my keep somehow,” he says, bland, and Minato laughs. He kisses Orochimaru, there beneath the cover of blooms, and outside the rain is finally starting to fade.


End file.
